Application of Intercultural Communication.doc

跨文化交际在英语教学中的运用application of intercultural communication in english teachingcontentsabstract.1key words.1i. introduction.2ii. importance of the intercultural communication in english teaching.21. the goal of cross-culture.22. problems exist in cross-cultural teaching.3 3. the reasons for the cultural unawareness.4iii. teachers worries in english teaching and the solutions.71. teachers worries.72. teachers roles.73. possible solutions.9iv. improvements for culture education in english teaching.91. cultivation of culture awareness.92. students culture awareness.103. teachers culture awareness.10v. conclusion.11references.12application of intercultural communication in english teachingapplication of intercultural communicationin english teachingabstract: as the world undergoing both dramatic internal exchanges and unparalleled degrees of global integration, intercultural communication studies seems uniquely posed to help make sense of these changes. language studying is reflected in specific countries, specific national culture, values, customs, and act as a mirror of the most important cultural manifestations. since geography, social systems, productivity, cultural traditions, national psychological and personality characteristics in different cultures, these differences often lead the chinese students to make mistakes in using english. and learn a foreign language, to understand their language of the soul, is the language study goal, that means understand their social culture. but due to the examination-oriented education in china, especially in foreign language teaching, which remains the neglect of the cross-cultural awareness and unreasonable training methods, students often have a poor understanding of cross-cultural differences in areas, such as the word meaning and the custom abroad, which can eventually lead to ignorance of english language background. according to the aftermath of poor cross-cultural awareness, the cultivation of cross-culture consciousness should be drawn more attention in english teaching. keywords: culture； intercultural communication； cross-culture consciousness摘 要: 随着世界范围内各个不同社会经历着巨大的内部变化和前所未有的全球整合，跨文化交际学应运而生，合理地解释了所有这些变化的根源。语言学习可以反映在特定的国家、特定民族文化、价值观以及习俗上是重要文化表征的一面镜子。由于不同文化在地理环境、社会制度、生产力、文化传统、个性特征以及民族心理的差异，从而常导致中国学生在英语运用上出错。而学好一门外语,其目的, 要懂得他们的“心灵之语言”，即了解他们的社会文化。但当今中国的教育，尤其是中学的应试教育，仍延续不合理的训练方法，对学生的跨文化意识培养有所忽视，学生缺乏对地区文化差异的了解，包括词义和风俗等的理解，从而最终导致对英语文化背景的无知，鉴于这种后果，跨文化意识的培养应给予更高度的重视。关键字: 文化；跨文化交际； 跨文化意识i. introductionany country or nation has its own unique traditional culture including values, modes of thinking, moral rules, customs, life styles, etc, which form the difference between different nations on culture. language is the carrier of culture, and culture is the symbol of it. intercultural communication is the communication between people whose cultural perceptions and symbolic systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event. frequently, the item cross-cultural communication is used when referring to communication between people from different cultures. for this hot issue, the foreign language teaching develop faster and faster with the international cultural and economic development, intercultural communication is becoming hotter and hotter, we need to learn something international and universal, when the west meets east, north meets south, different cultures and information exchange quickly and affectively, culture communication and personal exchange enforce us to change our own ideas and the ways of thinking. on the way to the information period, we need to advocate and protect our own cultures and values, at the same time, learn to understand and accept the international ones. in english teaching, intercultural communication in one of the most important parts for the english learners as well as teachers. for the teachers, the requirements are changed; their roles are becoming complicated. there must be obstacles and problems in the way of teaching.most misunderstandings are not very easy to overcome and some of them go beyond superficial differences. there are something deeply rooted in ones history and nation characteristics rather than the superficial phenomenon. in order to avoid the cultural conflicts during the communication between different languages system, we have to learn the background of the intercultural communication. the language authorities pay their strong attention on this issue. intercultural communication is becoming more and more urgent in english teaching. in short, we are concerned with the similarities that unite us as well as the differences that divide us. ii. importance of the intercultural communication in english teaching1. the goal of cross-culturethe goal is to make students aware of cultural knowledge, understand not only other countrys social norms, common rules of conduct, values and cultural structures of social positioning, but also the identifications of important facts in the culture and have the capacities to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable culture by the cultural knowledge in intercultural communication or cross-cultural communication. in china, because of the limited english environment, most foreign languages learning happen just in school scene, the vast majority of learners rarely have the opportunity to target cultural community learning, work and life, and most teachers can only stay in the classrooms, books, their goal is just export the lifeless language point to students, especially in high school. however, in the new-standard-based teaching, the goal of language teaching is to help students develop the intercultural communication skills, and interpersonal skills on the language forms of words the importation of cultural objectives can insert the language learning process. hammerly (1982) summarized the objective of the 10 teaching culture, these goals can become a culture of the objectives: (1) understand the word and phrase of cultural connotations;(2) understand the code under normal circumstances;(3) get the development of cultural interest and objectives ofdeepening understanding of cultural goals; (4) cross-cultural communication to understand the distinction;(5) understand cultural differences and customs;(6) identify and understand similar research topics;(7) institute a comprehensive view of cultural goals;(8) act with the objective of cultural exposition on the assessment capabilities;(9) properly treat different views of the other culture; (10) cultivate academic research capacity of the target culture;2. problems exist in cross-cultural teaching the problems in english teaching are that they emphasize on primarily teaching english vocabularies and english grammars; most teachers focus on the sentence structures and grammars knowledge analysis, and neglect of cross-cultural interpersonal skills training. some teachers think the cross-cultural penetration is a waste of time, the time of one class of is limited, if talking about cultural knowledge in the classroom, and they can not complete courses on time, and therefore affect the scores of students. the phenomenons most can be seen in high school class-room teaching, and the high-school study period as a basic foundation of second language study play an importance role in further english study. those cause our special attention on high school students study.moreover, foreign language applications will inevitably involve different cultural practices, different world outlooks, and different ways of thinking, different political beliefs and religious beliefs. however, for a long time, the mother tongue always consciously or unconsciously involved, because our students live in the mother tongue culture, and china is lack of the environment that everyone could speak english. when we come to the international communication, the united states people often do not understand our culture, chinese either, those result in the actual cross-cultural communication in which students often have some “cultural errors”. our teaching material do not pay attention to offer a humanistic content and sentences using, which even mislead our students, so they are still follow the incorrect material and writing or speaking “chinglish”，in this sense，i think，maybe we can say the problems is not made by the students, but the society and educator should take more responsibility for the consequence.in a word, the education method should be renewed, that means the “exam-oriented-education” should be replaced，otherwise the new method of teaching will not be a practical reformation3. the reasons for the culture unawareness3.1 the cause of mistakes made by chinese students in cross-cultural communication involves both cultural and communicating knowledge. only knowing different cultural features, and how to get a successful communicating with members of other cultures with sincerely “desire”, can our students farthest overcome cultural differences caused by different cultural barriers.the mistakes for chinese high-school students made in cross-cultural communication maybe result from the following reasons.3.2 lack of knowledge and understanding of different cultural differences, their teachers and their exam papers seldom tell them how to deal with other cultures.two kinds of them, english language and chinese cultural common differences in which students often make the same mistake. first, the title in english and chinese languages cultural differences exists. in informal occasion, chinese and westerners will directly call people names, to show the close relationship. chinese think it is impolite to call strangers given name. therefore, when chinese people directly called foreigners given names，they will feel sorry for the people with feeling inadequate or immodest, but the fact is different. as helen oatey (1987) said: “if the west does not directly call names, they will not be pleased, because they feel that do not directly call names that do not want to make friends with them”. secondly, differences between cultural greetings which we will explore in the next section. 3.2.1 holding the chinese way of thinking, transplant it to the english expression, commonly known as “chinglish” equate to neglected cultural differences. as a member of cultural observers, another culture, he often used own culture model to judge and interpret the observed phenomena. when the two cultures conflict with each other, these students are apt to use native model to understand “greece” culture, thought and expression thus often misleading. (lixingzhong, 2000)for example, regards others morning!good morning, did you have breakfast?what breakfast? indeed, the english-speaking countries will be based on specific environment, people will say “good morning, class! good morning, everybody! good morning, mr. /mars /miss green”.english words are often used in the greetings hi/hello! “how are you? good morning! (good afternoon!) good evening (good night!)” above in the chinese language greetings is rarely used, and we chinese people in the party, commonly used are: “have you eaten?”this is the chinese peoples common greetings. in fact, they do not really want to know the experience of the others meals. however, in english, the language is not in such kind of the way in greetings, and invite each other to express the meaning of a piece of dining. another common chinese language regards language is “where are you going?” if ask westerners in this way, they are often unhappy and will consider such issues in their affair. instead, they talk about the weather. therefore, in the west do not understand cultural differences, is inevitably have many misunderstandings. conscientiously study and the correct use of english greetings differences are particularly important. moreover, the west cross-cultural communication is usually the way through conversation. “teacher” is the title phrase that can not be used. chinese people often greet their teachers “good morning, teacher”. in fact, it is incorrect, in english language, “teacher” can not be used as a title, they usually use “mr. or miss” in the class.3.2.2 lack of real language environment.as everyone has realized, english is not our first language, the language is restricted to the classroom practice and presentation, due to the lack of practical language environment. because of the traditional teaching methods-law tradition impact on my classroom teaching as a “spoon-fed” education, classroom teachers become the “voice” of teachers reading of prepared statements, the students learn only blind, passively language information. as an international language, english should be dynamic and colorful. not only just in its grammar and fixed sentence ,but also in the setting of a good topic for students to create the atmosphere of learning english, students wont feel learning english is tasteless, lose interest in learning english. in this way, students communicate with teachers and class-mates more than before, which can improve their spoken english and correct their mistakes.students with high score, but little ability, divorced from practical application, while their capacity for test even far exceeds the english countries students. 3.2.4 most teachers themselves are lack of the horizon of worldwide, they are accustom to the old teaching method of mechanical information export ,they havent realize in current situation they should improve themselves to catch on with the modern society and meet the need of students, which can make the students lose more interest in english study.3.2.5 say stop to exam-oriented-education. china today need a person who can contribute himself to unique creations, not a mechanical follower. reform will not work until the old educational style goes to an end.3.2.6 giving a deep culture impression to students by using of teaching tools. teachers who teach cross-cultural knowledge should collect relevant culture material in the shape of the sound, written file, documentary and so on. powerful multimedia can fully make good use of showing teaching materials to students in three-dimension, it is becoming clear when the united states map presenting its geographical profiles on careen; the practices are found easily than ever before, and other cultural background will bring the students endless imaginations about exotic culture. in the high-school text unit11 “country music” the author uses multimedia technology for the broadcast of the text referred to the u.s. singer john denver ,showing his image in rural areas, depending the theme by using the western united states and british background images, so that students get a better understanding about the american culture and value of music. (translated by panchangsheng-1987) last, in a text of another unit “charlie chaplin”, use multimedia equipment for broadcast, if we can use the film starring chaplin, refer to the “gold rush” background, allow students to find out chaplins performance style, and understand what is the “silent movie”, “gold-rush” to understand american history. it gives details of the lives of all of the united states, so that students learn much about american culture and life through the vivid experience of the united states. multi-media further enhance cultural knowledge accumulation and classroom teaching effectiveness. 3.2.7 the teaching materials should be improved, and taken the culture differences into account, let our teaching text to be a real presentation of different cultures. with the advance of new standard, we can see the series books of nse give us a new idea of illuminating students, which aim to cultivate the students ability freely. may be it is the first step to cast off exam-oriented-education.iii. teachers worries in english teaching and the solutions1. teachers worriesnow that we see a unanimous agreements on the necessity of such a reform, why are there still few real actions taken? of course there might be an addiction, or lets just call it a habit of many teachers to exercise their “absolute” control over the classroom. lets put these people aside. then who else? some claim that they avoid having students speak out in the class not because they want to take the control, but in the fear of students loss of confidence due to their failure to say anything “decent” when given a task to. according to what i know from some famous school so far, even some teachers worry about receiving complaints from students who might argue that they were not actually teaching but wasting, or even worse, killing time. or even if the students themselves do not say so, their parents might show up from outside of the classroom after class, pointing out how “irresponsible” the teachers are to one another and threatening to order the school to fire them. this has jeopardized many teachers sense of respect before students and makes them feel they are running a risk for being a “maverick” in school because conventionally even innovation in teaching does not mean letting the students dominate a class. 2. teachers rolesit is true that beginners in learning a language must gain a certain amount of knowledge in the form of explicit explanation of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary to be able to acquire that language further on in